Yuri is a student at St. Clair College in Windsor ON, studying Esports Administration and Entrepreneurship. Yuri is passionate about all aspects of esports and specializes in League of Legends and Overwatch. He has competed in the Collegiate Overwatch League for his school team - Saints Gaming.

Teamfight Tactics: Patch 9.17 Breakdown

What’s New in Patch 9.17?

New Champion

Pantheon (NEW)

Cost: 5 Gold.

Origin: Dragon.

Class: Guardian.

Ability: Grand Starfall

Pantheon leaps into the air, crashing down towards the farthest enemy and stunning them for 4/6/8 seconds. Enemies in Pantheon’s path take 15%/30%/45% of their maximum health as magic damage. Subsequently, they also burn for an additional 20% of their maximum health as true damage over 10 seconds. Also applies Grievous Wounds.

System Changes

The first carousel now has all 2 cost units.

Ghost armies now benefit from Trait bonuses.

Attack speed cap has been increased from 2.5 to 5.0.

Tooltips have been updated to be clearer, and numbers scale with ability power.

Traits

Assassin (REWORK)

Increased the delay before Assassins jump so they can access backline units more often.

The Breakdown

Before getting into the patch changes, Pantheon makes his grand appearance into Teamfight Tactics to give your team a lot more muscle. Pantheon is a Dragon/Guardian unit making him fairly tanky with both bonuses activated. Together with those stats and his Grand Starfall ability, Pantheon will be a devastating frontline unit with his somewhat over tuned ability. He’ll slot in perfectly with any composition that uses the Guardian trait effectively. He can also find success in sorcerer comps, especially if given the Sorcerer buff through the spatula item. His ability is able to nearly wipe an entire team with a Rabadon’s Deathcap and the sorcerer buff.

Beyond the new unit, some significant trait changes came in as well. The reworking of assassins is a particularly interesting one. Although their pounce mechanic has been delayed slightly to enable easier access to backline units, their damage ratios were changed considerably. Although Assassins will lose out on major burst damage through their reduced critical strike damage, they will be able to critical strike more often with the increased critical strike chance given to them. It’s safe to say the change alone will bring more Assassin compositions back into the game.

Welcome Changes

A welcomed nerf also came to Hextech and Noble traits, the latter being much more significant. Shapeshifter units also received a multitude of buffs to increase their chances of actually transforming. The final major change was the new balancing on healing and how healing mechanics worked. Originally, Grievous Wounds would completely nullify healing by 100%. Since the mechanic was nerfed to 80%, items were balanced accordingly to reduce overall healing as their counter’s effectiveness was reduced.